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Pressing Your Buttons (from my book Believing Bullshit)

One way in which we can shape the
beliefs of others is by rational persuasion. Suppose, for example, that I want
someone to believe that Buckingham Palace is in London (which it is). I could
provide them with a great deal of evidence to support that belief. I could also
just take them to London so they can see with their own eyes that that’s where
Buckingham Palace is located.

But what if these kinds of method
aren’t available? Suppose I have little or no evidence to support the belief I
nevertheless want people to accept. Suppose I can’t just show them that it’s
true. How else might I get them to believe?

I might try to dupe them, of
course. I could produce fraudulent evidence and bogus arguments. But what if I
suspect this won’t be enough? What if I think my deceit is likely to be
detected? Another option is to drop even the pretence of rational persuasion
and to adopt what I call Pressing your
Buttons.

Belief-shaping mechanisms

All sorts of causal mechanisms can
be used to shape belief. For example, our beliefs are shaped by social and
psychological mechanisms such as peer pressure and a desire to conform. Finding
ourselves believing something of which our community disapproves is a deeply
uncomfortable experience, an experience that may lead us unconsciously to
tailor what we believe so that we remain in step with them. We’re far more
susceptible to such social pressures than we like to believe (as several famous
psychological studies have shown[i]).

Belief can also be shaped through
the use of reward and punishment. A grandmother may influence the beliefs of
her grandson by giving him a sweet whenever he expresses the kind of beliefs of
which she approves, and ignores or smacks him when he expresses the “wrong”
sort of belief. Over time, this may change not just the kind of beliefs her
grandson expresses, but also the kinds of belief he holds.

Perhaps beliefs might also be
directly implanted in us. Some suppose God has implanted certain beliefs in at
least some of us. Our evolutionary history may also produce certain beliefs, or
at least certain predispositions to belief. For example, there’s growing
evidence that a disposition towards religious belief is part of our
evolutionary heritage, bestowed on us by natural selection. But even if neither
God, nor evolution, has implanted beliefs in us, perhaps we’ll one day be able
to implant beliefs ourselves using technology. Perhaps we’ll be able to strap a
brain-state-altering helmet on to an unwitting victim while they sleep, dial in
the required belief, press the red button and “Bing!”, our victim wakes up with
the belief we’ve programmed them hold. That would be a rather cruel trick. Some
hypnotists claim a similar ability to, as it were, directly “inject” beliefs
into people’s minds.

Obviously, these kinds of causal
mechanism can operate on us without our realizing what’s going on. I might
think I condemn racism because I have good grounds for supposing racism is
morally wrong, but the truth is I have merely caved into peer pressure and my
desire not to be ostracised by my liberal family and friends. If a belief has
been implanted in me by, say, natural selection, or by some
brain-state-altering device then, again, I may not be aware that this is the
reason why I believe. Suppose, for example, that some prankster to programmes
me to believe I have been abducted by aliens using the belief-inducing helmet
described above. I wake up one morning and find, as a result, that I now very
strongly believe I was taken aboard a flying saucer during the night. I have no
awareness of the real reason why I now hold that belief – of the mechanism that
actually produced the belief in me. If asked how I know I was abducted, I will
probably say “I Just Know!”

Isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition, emotion

I’m going to focus here on five
important belief-shaping mechanisms: isolation,
control, uncertainty, repetition
and emotion.

(i)
isolation. Isolation is a useful belief-shaping tool. An isolated
individual is more vulnerable to various forms of psychological manipulation.
If you want someone to believe something that runs contrary to what their
friends and family believe, it’s a good idea to have them spend some time at a
retreat or remote training camp where their attachment to other ideas can more
easily be undermined. Cults often isolate their members in this way. The The
cult leader Jim Jones physically moved both himself and all his followers to
the Guyanan jungle (where they all eventually committed suicide). Isolation is
also recommended by some within more mainstream religions. In the UK,
hermetically sealed-off religious schools are not uncommon. Students at the
Tarbiyah Academy in Dewsbury, for example, are allegedly taught that

‘the enemies of
Allah’ have schemed to poison the thinking and minds of [Muslim] youth and to
plant the spirit of unsteadiness and moral depravity in their lives. Parents
are told that they betray their children if they allow them to befriend
non-Muslims.[ii]

A related
mechanism is:

(ii)
control. If you want people to accept your belief system, it’s unwise to
expose them to alternative systems of belief. Gain control over the kind of
ideas to which they have access and to which they are exposed. Censor beliefs
and ideas that threaten to undermine your own. This kind of control is often
justified on the grounds that people will otherwise be corrupted or confused.
Totalitarian regimes will often remove “unhealthy” books from their libraries
if the books contradict the regime. All sorts of media are restricted on the grounds
that they will only “mislead” people. Schools under totalitarian regimes will
sometimes justify preventing children from discovering or exploring other
points of view on the grounds they will only succeed in “muddling” children.
Take a leaf out of the manuals of such regimes and restrict your followers’
field of vision so that everything is interpreted through a single ideological
lens – your own.

(iii)
uncertainty. If you want people to abandon their former beliefs and embrace
your own, or if you want to be sure they won’t reject your beliefs in favour of
others, it helps to raise as much doubt and uncertainty as possible about those
rival beliefs. Uncertainty is a potent source of stress, so the more you
associate alternative beliefs with uncertainty, the better. Ideally, offer a
simple set of geometric, easily formulated and remembered certainties designed
to give meaning to and cover every aspect of life. By constantly harping on the
vagaries, uncertainties and meaninglessness of life outside your belief system,
the simple, concrete certainties you offer may begin to seem increasingly
attractive to your audience.

(iv)
repetition. Encourage repetition. Get people to recite what you want them
to believe over and over again in a mantra-like way. Make the beliefs trip
unthinkingly off their tongues. It doesn’t matter whether your subjects accept
what they are saying, or even fully understand it, to begin with. There’s still
a fair chance that belief will eventually take hold. Mindless repetition works especially
well when applied in situations in which your subjects feel powerful pressure
to confirm. Lining pupils up in playgrounds for a daily, mantra-like recitation
of your key tenets, for example, combines repetition with a situation in which
any deviation by an individual will immediately result in a hundred pairs of
eyes turned in their direction.

(v)
emotion. Emotion can be harnessed to shape belief. Fear is particularly
useful. In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen
Eighty-Four, the regime seeks control not just over people’s behaviour,
but, even more importantly, what they think and feel. When the hapless rebel
Winston is finally captured, his ”educators” make it clear that what ultimately
concerns them are his thoughts:

“And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?”

“To make them confess.”

“No, that is not the reason. Try again.”

“To punish them.”

“No!” exclaimed O’Brien. His voice had changed extraordinarily, and
his face had suddenly become both stern and animated. “No! Not merely to extract
your confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you
here? To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one
whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not
interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not
interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about.[iii]

The terrifying contents of Room 101
eventually cause Winston to succumb. He ends up genuinely believing that if Big
Brother says that 2 plus 2 equals five, then two plus two does equal five. Many real regimes have been prepared to employ
similarly brutal methods to control what is going on in people’s minds.
However, emotional manipulation can take much milder forms yet still be
effective. For example, you might harness the emotional power of iconic music
and imagery. Ensure people are regularly confronted by portraits of Our Leader
accompanied by smiling children and sunbeams emanating from his head (those
Baghdad murals of Saddam Hussein spring to mind). Ensure your opponents and
critics are always portrayed accompanied by images of catastrophe and
suffering, or even Hieronymus-Bosch-like visions of hell. Make people emotional
dependent on your own belief system. Ensure that what self-esteem and sense of
meaning, purpose and belonging they have is derived as far as possible from
their belonging to your system of belief. Make sure they recognise that
abandoning that belief system will involve the loss of things about which they
care deeply.

It goes without saying that these
five mechanisms of thought-control are popular with various totalitarian
regimes. They are also a staple of many extreme religious cults.

Applied determinedly and
systematically, these mechanisms can be highly effective in shaping belief and
suppressing “unacceptable” lines of thought. They are particularly potent when
applied to children and young adults, whose critical defences are weak, and who
have a sponge-like tendency to accept whatever they are told.

Note that traditional mainstream
religious education has sometimes also involved heavy reliance on many,
sometimes all, of these five mechanisms. I was struck by a story a colleague
once told me that, as a teenage pupil of rather strict Catholic in the 1960’s,
she once put her hand up in class to ask why contraception was wrong. She was
immediately sent to the headmaster who asked her why she was obsessed with sex.
Interestingly, my colleague added that, even before she asked the question, she
knew she shouldn’t. While never explicitly saying so, her school and wider
Catholic community had managed to convey to her that asking such a question was
unacceptable. Her role was not to think and question, but to passively accept.
My colleague added that, even today, nearly half a century later later, despite
the fact that she no longer has any religious conviction, she finds herself
feeling guilty if she dares to question a Catholic belief. So effective was her
religious upbringing in straight-jacketing her thinking that she still feels instinctively that to do so is to
commit a thought-crime.

Of course, religious education
doesn’t have to be like this, and often it isn’t. An open, questioning attitude
can be encouraged rather than suppressed. Still, it’s clear that some mainstream
religions have historically been very reliant upon such techniques so far as
the transmission of the faith from one generation to the next is concerned. In
some places, they still are.

Brainwashing

Applied in a consistent and systematic fashion these various
techniques add up to what many would call “brainwashing”. Kathleen Taylor, a
research scientist in physiology at the University of Oxford, upon whose work I
am partly drawing here, has published a book on brainwashing. In an associated
newspaper article, Taylor writes that:

One
striking fact about brainwashing is its consistency. Whether the context is a
prisoner of war camp, a cult’s headquarters or a radical mosque, five core
techniques keep cropping up: isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition and
emotional manipulation.[iv]

Taylor adds in her book that within
the discipline of psychology, “brainwashing” is an increasingly superfluous
word. It can be a misleading term, associated as it is, with
Manchurian-Candidate-type stories of seemingly ordinary members of the public
transformed into presidential, assassins on hearing a trigger phrase. As Taylor
says, that kind of brainwashing is a myth. Case studies suggest there is

no “magic”
process called “brainwashing”, though many (including the U.S. government) have
spent time and money looking for such a process. Rather the studies suggest
that brainwashing… is best regarded as a collective noun for various,
increasingly well-understood techniques of non-consensual mind-change.

The unwitting and well-intentioned brainwasher

Often, those who use such
techniques are despicable people with the evil aim of enslaving minds. Edward
Hunter, the CIA operative who coined the phrase back in 1950, characterized
brainwashing in emotive terms:

The intent is to
change a mind radically so that its owner becomes a living puppet – a human
robot – without the atrocity being visible from the outside. The aim is to
create a mechanism in flesh and blood, with new beliefs and new thought
processes inserted into a captive body. What that amounts to is the search for
a slave race that, unlike the slaves of olden times, can be trusted never to
revolt, always to be amenable to orders, like an insect to its instincts.

Perhaps this
very often was the intent so far as the regimes of which Hunter had experience
were concerned. However, surely the intent to produce mental slaves is not
required for brainwashing. Sometimes those who apply these techniques genuinely
believe themselves to be doing good. Their intention is not to enslave but to free their victims from evil and
illusion. Yet, despite the absence of any evil intent, heavy reliance on such
techniques still adds up to brainwashing. Brainwashers can be good people with
little or no awareness that what they are engaged in is brainwashing.

The consenting victim

In the second Taylor quotation
above, Taylor says that brainwashing involves various techniques of non-consensual mind-change. That cannot
be quite right. Of course, prisoners-of-war don’t usually consent to being
brainwashed. But people can in principle consent. In one well-known thriller,
the trained assassin at the heart of the film turns out to have agreed to be
brainwashed. The fact that he consented to have such techniques applied to him
doesn’t entail that he wasn’t brainwashed.

People sometimes willingly submit
themselves to brainwashing. They sign up to be brainwashed at a cult’s training
camp, say. Admittedly, they will not usually describe what they have signed up
to as “brainwashing”. As they see it, even while they are fully aware that the
above techniques will be applied to them, they nevertheless suppose they are
merely being “educated” - being put through a process that will open up their
minds and allow them to see the truth.

Also notice that people are
sometimes forcibly confronted with the truth. I might be forced to look at
compelling evidence that someone I love has done some terrible deed, evidence
that does convince me that they’re guilty. So not only is not all brainwashing
non-consensual, not all non-consensual mind-change is brainwashing.

Reason vs. brainwashing

So what is brainwashing, then? What marks it out from other belief-shaping
mechanisms? At this point, some readers might be wondering whether what I am
calling “brainwashing” is really any different to any other educational method.
Isn’t the application of reason to persuade really just another form of
thought-control? Just another way of wielding power over the minds of others?
So why shouldn’t we favour brainwashing over reason? Particularly if no one is
actually being coerced, threatened or harmed?

In fact, there’s at least one very
obvious and important difference between the use of reason and the use of these
kinds of belief-shaping techniques. Reason is truth-sensitive. It favours true
beliefs over false beliefs. Trying making a rational case for believing that
New Jersey is populated with ant-people or that the Earth’s core is made of
yoghurt. Because these beliefs are false, you’re not going to find it easy.

Reason functions, in effect, as a
filter on false beliefs. It’s not one hundred percent reliable of course –
false beliefs can still get through. But it does tend to weed out false
beliefs. There are innumerable beliefs out there that might end up lodging in
your head, from the belief that Paris is the capital of France to the belief
that the Earth is ruled by alien lizard-people. Apply your filter of reason,
and only those with a fair chance of being true will get through. Turn your
filter off, and your head will soon fill up with nonsense.

And yet many belief systems do
demand that we turn our filters off, at least when it comes to their own
particular beliefs. In fact, those who turn their filters off – those whose
minds have become entirely passive receptacles of the faith – are often held up
by such belief-systems as a shining example to others. Mindless, uncritical
acceptance (or, as they would see it, a simple, trusting faith in the
pronouncements of Big Brother) is paraded as a badge of honour.

Reason is a double-edged sword. It
does not favour the beliefs of the “educator” over those of the “pupil”. It
favours those beliefs that are true. This means that if you try to use reason
to try to bring others round to your way of thinking, you run the risk that
they may be able to demonstrate that it is actually you that’s mistaken. That’s
a risk that some “educators” aren’t prepared to take.

The contrast between the use of
reason to persuade, and the use of the kind of belief-shaping mechanisms
outlined above, is obvious. You can use emotional manipulation, peer pressure,
censorship and so on to induce beliefs that happen to be true. But they can be
just effectively used to induce belief that Big Brother loves you, that there
are fairies at the bottom of the garden and that the Earth’s core is made of
yoghurt. Such techniques do indeed favour the beliefs of the “educator” over
those of the “pupil”. Which is precisely why those “educators” who suspect they
may end up losing the argument tend to favour them.

I call the application of such
non-truth-sensitive belief-inducing techniques – techniques that don’t require
even the pretence of rational persuasion – Pressing
Your Buttons. Brainwashing involves the systematic and dedicated
application of such button-pressing techniques.

Of course, to some extent, we can’t
avoid pressing the buttons of others. Nor can we entirely avoid having our own
buttons pressed. That fact is, we all have our beliefs shaped by such non-truth
sensitive mechanisms. No doubt we flatter ourselves about just how “rational”
we really are. And, like it or not, you will inevitably influence the beliefs
of others by non-truth-sensitive means.

For example, my own children’s
beliefs are undoubtedly shaped by the kind of peer group to which I introduce
them, by their desire to want to please (or perhaps annoy) me, by the range of
different beliefs to which I have given them access at home, and so on. But of
course that’s not yet to say I’m guilty of brainwashing my children. The extent
to which we shape the beliefs of other by pressing their buttons, rather than
relying on rational means, is a matter of degree. There’s a sliding scale of
reliance on non-truth-sensitive mechanisms, with brainwashing located at the
far end of the scale. There’s clearly a world of difference between, on the one
hand, the parent who tries to give their child access to a wide range of
religious and political points of views, encourages their child to think,
question, and value reason, and allows their child to befriend children with
different beliefs and, on the other hand, the parent who deliberately isolates
their child, ensures their child has access only to ideas of which the parent
approves, demands formal recitation of certain beliefs, allows their child to
befriend children who share the same beliefs, and so on.

The dehumanizing effect of button-pressing

So one key difference between
relying on reason to influence the beliefs of others and relying on button
pressing is that only the former is sensitive to truth. Button pressing can as
easily be used to induce false or even downright ridiculous beliefs as it can
true beliefs.

There is also a second important
difference worth noting. As the philosopher Kant noted, when you rely on reason
to try to influence the beliefs of others, you respect their freedom to make
(or fail to make) a rational decision. When you resort to pressing their
buttons on the other hand, you are, in effect, stripping them of that freedom. Your subject might think they’ve made
a free and rational decision, but the truth is they’re your puppet – you’re
pulling their strings. By resorting to button-pressing– peer pressure, emotional manipulation,
repetition, and so on – you are, in effect, treating them as just one more bit
of the causally-manipulatable natural order – as mere things. The button-pressing approach is, in essence, a dehumanizing
approach.

Conclusion

Clearly, a cult that employs
full-blown brainwashing at a training camp is a cause for concern. If the
beliefs it induces are pernicious – if, for example, followers are being lured
into terrorism – then obviously we should alarmed. However, even if the beliefs
induced happen to be benign, there’s still cause for concern.

One reason we should be concerned
is the potential hazard such mindless
and uncritical followers pose. They may as well have cotton wool in their ears
so far as the ideas and arguments of non-believers are concerned. They are
immune to reason. Trapped inside an Intellectual Black Hole, they are now
largely at the mercy of those who control the ideas at its core. The dangers
are obvious.

Such extreme examples of
brainwashing are comparatively rare. Still, even if not engaged in full-blown
brainwashing, if the promoters of belief system come increasingly to rely on
button-pressing to shape the beliefs of others, that too is a cause for
concern. The more we rely on button-pressing, the less sensitive to reason and
truth our beliefs become.

[i]
Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments revealed people are prone to denying the
evidence of their own eyes if it brings them into disagreement with others
(though admittedly this is not quite the same thing as changing what one
believes in order to conform). See Asch, S. E. “Effects Of Group Pressure Upon
The Modification And Distortion Of Judgment” in H. Guetzkow (ed.) Groups, Leadership And Men (Pittsburgh,
PA: Carnegie Press, 1951).

Comments

I heard this interview today of someone, whom I think is of my generation, who had a strict religious upbringing. He talked about the ingroup and outgroup concept or us and them. This is not an unusual cultural phenomenon and doesn't just apply to religion. Narrow-mindedness comes from extreme parochialism (read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel) that can exist in any culture. It existed in my youth, where we were taught that everyone else was culturally inferior in some way.

These days, with exposure to many different media, at least in the West, or just by travelling, narrow-minded prejudices can be overcome. That's why I'm a huge advocate of multiculturalism.

Completely off-topic, you might be interested in this. (Note: it has a shelf life.) I guess you know Simon Blackburn (I have to admit I didn't). Alan Saunders and The Philosopher's Zone was (still is) very popular in Oz.

I don't see any real difference between 1 and 2. Aren't they both forms of isolation? The first is physical, the second is mental or ideological isolation.

Interesting piece, but how can we explain the apparent correlation between religious belief and aptitude for logic? Many logicians (Geach, Arnauld, possibly Ockham, possibly Godel, probably many others) have had religious beliefs.

The fact that some logicians did does not suggest an apparent correlation.

There seems to be a strong correlation between being (in the present day, in the US and Western Europe at least) an academic philosopher and being non-theist.

On the other hand, it's not clear to me whether there is such a correlation in the case of philosophers of religion, most of whom are - like the population at large, though I don't know whether it's more or less frequent - theists.

There were a dozen little items throughout your blog that prove that you are also being and have been brainwashed. I think you'll find that some of it can be good. I'd actually point them out if I was invested in your blog, but I'm not.

If someone wets their bed every night, and they don't seem to care much about the stench or laying in their filth, parents employ these brainwashing techniques to great effect, and to the betterment of their child. And on the opposite extreme, if you are prone to do things society considers evil, sex trafficking for instance, a truly unbrainwashed person might be willing to accept with their unbiased mind the value and benefit of kidnapping and prostitution. I believe you'll find that you can't argue someone out of this perspective, once they've adopted it. Not all ideas are worthy of freedom. Some of them should be locked up or executed.

There are probably many reasons for this...but, I would have thought that one reason why such a connection can exist is because if one does have a religious belief it would then naturally follow that a God would not on the one hand give men the ability to reason about the world while at the same time deceive the reasoner about the reality of the world.

Therefore, such a person would not be sceptical about reason and knowledge...

This is why I think major theoretical scientific breakthroughs are quite often made by religious scientists.

For instance Richard Dawkins detested Lovelock's "Gaia" model on account that it was "holistic"...he hated it so much that he attacked Lovelock personally...and yet now the Gaia theory or forms of it are accepted as a good model...

"how can we explain the apparent correlation between religious belief and aptitude for logic"

You seem to assert this on the basis of anecdotal evidence, which is actually another of the warning signs of a IBH.

As a rule, professional philosophers are non-theists (over 85%).

In addition, there's empirical evidence to suggest that theists tend to be less logical and more intuitive in their thinking.

Here are some abstracts I just copied from a Luke Galen comment on Randal Rauser's blog here: http://randalrauser.com/2013/07/religiosity-never-leads-to-a-decrease-in-bias-reasonable-doubts-about-luke-galen/

Shenhav et al., (2012). Three studies support this hypothesis, linking intuitive cognitive style to belief in God. Study 1 showed that individual differences in cognitive style predict belief in God. Participants completed the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005), which employs math problems that, although easily solvable, have intuitively compelling incorrect answers. Participants who gave more intuitive answers on the CRT reported stronger belief in God. This effect was not mediated by education level, income, political orientation, or other demographic variables. Study 2 showed that the correlation between CRT scores and belief in God also holds when cognitive ability (IQ) and aspects of personality were controlled. Moreover, both studies demonstrated that intuitive CRT responses predicted the degree to which individuals reported having strengthened their belief in God since childhood, but not their familial religiosity during childhood, suggesting a causal relationship between cognitive style and change in belief over time. Study 3 revealed such a causal relationship over the short term: Experimentally inducing a mindset that favors intuition over reflection increases self-reported belief in God.

Gervais & Norenzayan (2012): "Four additional experiments provided evidence of causation, as subtle manipulations known to trigger analytic processing also encouraged religious disbelief."Pennycook et al., (2012): Abstract: An analytic cognitive style denotes a propensity to set aside highly salient intuitions when engaging in problem solving. We assess the hypothesis that an analytic cognitive style is associated with a history of questioning, altering, and rejecting (i.e., unbelieving) supernatural claims, both religious and paranormal. In two studies, we examined associations of God beliefs, religious engagement (attendance at religious services, praying, etc.), conventional religious beliefs (heaven, miracles, etc.) and paranormal beliefs (extrasensory perception, levitation, etc.) with performance measures of cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style. An analytic cognitive style negatively predicted both religious and paranormal beliefs when controlling for cognitive ability as well as religious engagement, sex, age, political ideology, and education. Participants more willing to engage in analytic reasoning were less likely to endorse supernatural beliefs. Further, an association between analytic cognitive style and religious engagement was mediated by religious beliefs, suggesting that an analytic cognitive style negatively affects religious engagement via lower acceptance of conventional religious beliefs. Results for types of God belief indicate that the association between an analytic cognitive style and God beliefs is more nuanced than mere acceptance and rejection, but also includes adopting less conventional God beliefs, such as Pantheism or Deism. Our data are consistent with the idea that two people who share the same cognitive ability, education, political ideology, sex, age and level of religious engagement can acquire very different sets of beliefs about the world if they differ in their propensity to think analytically. Pennycook et al. 2013: We provide evidence that religious skeptics, as compared to believers, are both more reflective and effective in logical reasoning tasks. While recent studies have reported a negative association between an analytic cognitive style and religiosity, they focused exclusively on accuracy, making it difficult to specify potential underlying cognitive mechanisms. The present study extends the previous research by assessing both performance and response times on quintessential logical reasoning problems (syllogisms). Those reporting more religious skepticism made fewer reasoning errors than did believers. This finding remained significant after controlling for general cognitive ability, time spent on the problems, and various demographic variables. Crucial for the purpose of exploring underlying mechanisms, response times indicated that skeptics also spent more time reasoning than did believers. This novel finding suggests a possible role of response slowing during analytic problem solving as a component of cognitive style that promotes overriding intuitive first impressions. Implications for using additional processing measures, such as response time, to investigate individual differences in cognitive style are discussed.

I am not sure the issue is analytical thought in general...for analytical thinking may be linear...BUT associative analytical thinking is a different thing entirely...

And I think it is associative thinking, i.e. the ability to think outside the box...to as it were escape from your "push button thingy" that is the relevant.

The research you refer to does seem to differentiate between the two...I think this omission detracts from the paper.

This paper...you might find interesting...it is an extremely important paper...actually.

It is called "Casual Entropic Forces" and is found on this chaps blog:

http://www.alexwg.org/

I would give you the physics journal it is in but you may not have access to it...on the blog you can read it...it is extremely good...for instance, it explains why when reading Kant or "The Sun" newspaper ones brain hurts more :)

My subsequent post was directed at your reference to a research paper that I think is flawed and you do not.

However, I can link this with your chapter...because countless experiments have established that people are not rational in practice (perhaps they are in a test). People are generally overconfident in their judgements.

In fact, people have a perverse tendency to notice information that confirms their current beliefs, while overlooking contradictory evidence.

Knowing the principles of logic may give us the means to check ourselves...BUT this is ideal behaviour.

I mean, why did you use the abstract in the first place?

You admit that you just looked them up...so I get the impression that you have not read the paper...

Isn't this an example of noticing information that just confirms your present beliefs?

I think what I am interested in is the type of cognitive quality required to overcome ones prejudices...to see clearly as it were...

I mean, Einstein's special relativity thought model concerning a person in a free falling lift is a good example...

Using the evidence within the lift the person would not notice they were in fact moving, i.e. there would be no evidence of motion (noticing only information that confirmed their beliefs)...but in reality they would be moving.

Besides, you seem to be placing a judgement value on analytical cognition as being superior to intuition...again, you are noticing on the information that confirms your beliefs.

There were several research papers that I cited. I cited the abstracts in response to what I took to be the implicit suggestion that theists are more logical in their thinking. In fact, they tend to be less so. The abstracts support that.

The rest of what you say seems irrelevant to what I say in the chapter. Indeed many of the points you make are actually made by me in the book. e.g. that we all tend to be less rational than we think, etc. That point is actually made in the chapter. That people look for things that confirm not things that disconfirm is also in the book, and certainly does not contradict anything I say in the chapter.

I'm still at a loss as to what it is that I am supposed to have got wrong.

I don't believe I wrote anything about you getting anything wrong in your book.

I merely commented on your overconfidence over the papers you cite and saw it as an example of what your book discusses...

For the papers appear (or at least you are using these papers as a form of practical reasoning) to support your thesis, i.e. theist vs atheist (I am not interested in these types of debates because I think they are philosophically muddled on both sides...I mean, how can one logically debate something that is not within the realms of episteme).

As I wrote, I am very interested in associative thinking, i.e. why some people can do it and others cannot.

And that this was perhaps an explanation for Edward Ockham that a person like Gödel could be so creative (Godel did write his own ontological argument after-all...he must have believed it).

That in truth the issue is not analytical vs intuitive...but it really comes down to the ability to maximise entropy in the brain, i.e. associative thinking. And this explains why the thinkers Oakham cited were also religious.

The "Casual Entropic Forces" paper is the first paper that has addressed the different types of intelligence and more importantly, described it with rigour as a universal.

I mean, I don't have to tell you...that taken to its extremes being maximally reasoned and logical means that a such a person would confront an infinite sequence of nested logical problems before getting anything done!

Besides, there is a body of evolutionary work that suggests that irrational overconfidence is actually adaptive in humans and not reason.

Which means that being more reasoned does not make some ones evolutionary fitness greater, nor does it make one wise, nor does it make one a great scientist...

I mean, if a young student Einstein had been too rational, he would have concluded that he had very little chance of overturning the physics of Newton and Galileo.

Good, it's clear you have nothing to say about the posted chapter. Rather your point re those papers I cited is:

"For the papers appear (or at least you are using these papers as a form of practical reasoning) to support your thesis, i.e. theist vs atheist"

What thesis? That atheism is true? That theists are irrational? Nope. That's not why I cited them. I merely cited them to show that the suggestion that theists are more logical appears to run contrary to the evidence.

You then say:

"(I am not interested in these types of debates because I think they are philosophically muddled on both sides...I mean, how can one logically debate something that is not within the realms of episteme)."

This is not only unsupported by you it sounds suspiciously like going nuclear and/or playing the mystery card - other chapters of my book!

Your criticism's of my points are valid...however, that is because the issues here are complex and a blog is not the best place to flesh them out.

Concerning analytical and intuitive thinking with reference to theist and atheist worldviews...well, I would say that you are making a "judgement" that being "logical" is the "right" way to be as a human, i.e. an either/or position.

And what I am saying is that it is being "intuitive, irrational" that is in fact the most adaptive for humans in evolutionary terms.

And that this result is counter-intuitive...and what is more interesting is that we use reason itself, i.e. evolution model...to show that reason is not the best adaptive capability humans possess.

Concerning the nuclear option...well, what I mean here is that the God issue can be approached but not by using "knowledge" means...for me, it has to be approached using the Wittgenstein model of "certainty", i.e. using the methods of your recent talk at your college.

For instance, say a theist gives you an ontological proof of God's existence...and say for arguments sake you agree with him...and state...Yes, your proof absolutely proves the existence of God...I agree with you completely...

But, then you say...however, the issue doesn't end here...it doesn't because your ontological proof is a proof of an absolute, consistent system (because it is)...and so, you then say...What other absolute and consistent system exists?

The answer of course is Mathematics...

And what do we "know" about mathematics? Well, we do "know" that though mathematical axioms are absolutely true...we cannot be certain of their veracity...i.e. Gödel Incompleteness Theorem.

Therefore, the ontological model being equivalent to the mathematical model...the same conclusion must be reached.

So, your reach an impasse...both theist and atheist positions are non-sensical in this case.

I think if one wants to examine this God issue...one must first determine what one is "measuring" in the first place.

Your paper concerning "measurement" is quite good (I recommend anyone reading this post to give it a read..it is quite worthwhile).

Actually, cosmologist, John D. Barrow in New Theories of Everything makes an argument that you could replace God with mathematics. In reference to mathematical Platonism he has this to say:

It elevates mathematics close to the status of God... just alter the word ‘God’ to ‘mathematics’ wherever it appears and it makes pretty good sense. Mathematics is part of the world, and yet transcends it. It must exist before and after the Universe.

In the same book, it must be said, that Barrow addresses a variety of mathematical philosophies.

He also gave this tongue-in-cheek quote from Dave Rusin:

Mathematics is the part of science you could continue to do if you woke up tomorrow and discovered the universe was gone.

Thank you for your lucid article on the dangers of 'button-pushing'as a method of persuasion. Psychological research suggests that, like a vaccine, prior knowledge of the methods and effects of 'button-pushing' may help to inoculate against such techniques. With that in mind, I have published a free handbook to raise awareness of the most common techniques of psychological manipulation used by cults. The handbook may be read or downloaded at http://issuu.com/ben_gibran/docs/the_diy_prison. May I invite you to display the book cover on your blog by clicking the 'share' link at the bottom of the page and copying the 'embed' code? Thank you.

Strangely, I heard this Barrow chap on the radio a couple of days ago...his name rang a bell...I checked my library and sure enough I have his book (I get given these things...though I have not read his book through)

His point concerning Mathematics being Platonic does have an element of theoretical truth.

In quantum information physics such a space is used. Information physics is quite useful.

For example, this Barrow chap seems to use a lot of Russell type paradoxes, i.e. the Book that contains the list of all the books in the world...should it or should it not be in the list?

One can get a pretty convincing solution to this paradox quite easily...I won't go into detail on account the theory is conceptually complex but here is a brief solution.

Like all problems...you have to know what you are measuring and you have to know what measuring device you are using to make the measurement.

So, in the Russell paradox we have three variables:

1/ The person making the list (the observer)

2/ All the books in the world (the observed)

3/ The book that contains the list (the measuring device)

The key thing to understand is that we live in a participatory universe, i.e. stuff is all relational...meaning essentially that materialism is a very bad model. So, you have to think of a measurement as being a relation.

But to return to the solution...in it we have an observer, observed and measuring device.

The observer writes all the books in the world down into his book. And it is this book that contains the list.

We can define "all the books in the word" == "empty set"

Now, here is the subtle part...our measuring device book is a book BUT it is also a measuring device, unlike the books we are observing.

Therefore, we can define this book like this: the set that contains the empty set.

Therefore this book should not be included in the list...because in this instance we are using the book as a measuring device, i.e. a relation.

However, it has to be remembered that this solution only exists when it is being observed, i.e. being measured....

Same goes for Mathematics...it becomes real only when it is being used to measure something real in the world.

Effectively, you're saying that mathematics is dependent on empiricism. But most mathematics is done in the abstract. So there is a dialectic between mathematics and empirical evidence in science. A lot of the mathematics used in physics was discovered decades if not centuries before it became useful.

Dialectic? Yes, I would agree with this...but I would say that this mathematical dialectic requires an observer to activate the laws of mathematics.

I would agree with this Barrow chap that the laws of mathematics do exist in for want of a better descriptor Platonic space...and that this space must be atemporal and absolute...

I mean, one is forced to accept this view logically if one accepts that the universe was generated out of nothing via a random quantum fluctuation.

I mean the fact that all our physics constants (around 15 of them) follow a log uniform distribution and that this was "set-up" at the inception of the universe would support the Platonic idea of mathematics.

Concerning the empirical...I think what I mean is that it is mechanical intuition (a basic attribute of human intellect) combined with human geometric imagination that "activates" the laws of mathematics...because mechanics is geometry with the emphasis on motion and touch...and this gives humans an extra dimension of perception.

And I think it is this kind of physical reasoning that was responsible for most of our mathematical discoveries...it's just that I think as humans we forget the heuristic reasoning in mathematics...

Yes, I would agree that it takes an intelligence like ours (humans) to make mathematics manifest, yet it seems to have an existence independent of us in an abstract space, for want of a better term.

Personally, I like Roger Penrose's 3 way interaction between the Platonic, Mental and Physical, which you may have come across. The diagram depicted on this blog has been lifted from one of his books (I know of 3 that contain it).

Basically, it demonstrates the paradox of an intelligence producing mathematics, upon which the universe’s laws appear to be based, which produced the intelligence. The way out of this, I believe, is to assume that the intelligence has discovered the mathematics as if it is a latent code, a term that Marcus du Sautoy adopted as the titled of a TV series on this very subject.

Thank you Paul for Roger's pics...it is always a pleasant experience to read cigarette box calculations (they always contain so much concise information).

I am always wary of the use of the term "intelligence" in these kinds of discussions...the anthropic principle is a "temptation" one should resist...mainly, on account it leads to bad models and in truth doesn't explain anything.

This Platonic space is difficult to describe in a blog...but, I can give you a picture of what I mean.

Say, you are watching two chaps playing at a game of chess...and say you don't know the rules of the game but as you watch you slowly discern a structure, i.e. moves are alternating between the chaps, particular pieces move in a certain way consistently, etc.

The thing is, as you watch, you would be unaware that the players are playing according to the "rules" of chess...you only see the emergence of these rules locally and piecemeal, i.e. only when a move is made by a player...

For you are not aware of the totality of the rules of chess, though the players are...BUT, each move in the game "activates" one of these chess rules, i.e. it makes the rules of chess become real in the world...and this only happens when a move is made by a player.

So, you could think of the totality of the rules of chess being Platonic (I don't like the word on account of the baggage), i.e. these rules are out there whether you are watching a chess game or not...but, they only become real when you observe two people playing chess.

So, think of the chess game as two physically real objects interacting with each other in the world...and you are the observer...

The really key point though in the chess model is not really the rules of chess BUT rather how the information exchange between the two players occurs, i.e. it is always a minimum, i.e. each player does not tell the other player his intentions, he just makes a single move...i.e. he gives the other player only a minimum of information to the other player at the other players request of information from him, i.e. to make a move.

This is really the crucial point, i.e. information exchange between objects in the universe is ALWAYS a minimum...this is the deterministic part of the universe.

Your point about their being more mathematics than the universe needs follows if one only thinks of mathematics as "knowledge"...BUT...mathematics is in truth two things; it is knowledge but it is also an activity.

So, the question is: "What effect does a qualitative question have on the universe rather than a quantitative question?"

I mean, both types of questions are measurements, one real, one abstract. For example, what affect did Einstein's question to himself: "What would it be like to travel on a piece of light?" have on the universe?

Tegmark is a big proponent of the universe being mathematical. However, I do have my doubts about this position.

Mainly, because I have not found superfluous mathematics...I mean, even something as obscure as Riemann Zeta functions correspond to fluid flow...and the result that the prime number sequence appears to follow Benford's Law means that prime number space contains non-zero information...these are just a couple of examples...but there are many.

And if the wave-function is real that only confirms the information nature of the universe over the mathematical (so this question is not as moot as you think :) )

Here is a link that will get you to the paper that proposes that the wave-function is real...the link is for the pre-print...but the paper when it came out last year did not change much from the pre-print:

http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-theorem-shakes-foundations-1.9392

I am on holiday for three weeks now...so if you don't get a response from me...this is the reason.

I have to admit I don’t believe the currency of the universe is information, though I acknowledge this is an increasingly popular view. I think the currency of the universe is energy and ‘action’. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Planck’s constant, h, is in units of action (Joule-sec).

The inference, from the currency of the universe being information, is that the universe is a computer and operates in ‘bits’. Ken Wharton wrote an award-winning essay on this topic which I discuss here.

I think string theory with its 10 to the power 500 multiverse is an indication that there is more mathematics than the universe needs, as well as John Conway’s ATLAS with its multi-dimensional mathematical objects, the history of which is covered rudimentarily by Marcus du Sautoy in Finding Moonshine.

Actually, I think of mathematics as representing relationships between entities, such as space and time, force and momentum, gravity and curvature. It is the relationships that give us knowledge of the universe's dynamics. I would be careful about conflating the mathematics with the knowledge.

I am not sure that string theory does support the idea that the universe possesses more mathematics than it needs.

Nor do I think that the "computer" analogy of the universe is a useful model. Yes, there is perhaps evidence that space-time is pixelated explaining why the universe is flat but that is as far as the computer analogy is useful.

You mentioned the Planck constant...thing is, this constant is an independent fundamental constant in the universe that we arrive at through a physically real measurement, i.e. no mathematical theory involved in its derivation...the closest this measurement gets to mathematics is that we use a gauge to arrive at it...but, this is more number sense than mathematics.

For me, this is an indication that the universe is not fundamentally based on mathematics...at most I would say that mathematics is the language of Nature, i.e. the manner in which it "talks" to us, i.e. the "relations" you intimate.

I mean, for many years many physicists have attempted in vain to derive a mathematical expression for the fine grain structure constant...without success...Wouldn't this suggest that the universe doesn't have enough mathematics?

Well, all of nature’s constants have been derived empirically, including the dimensionless ones, because we have no other way of deriving them, as you point out. Having said that, Maxwell’s equations inclusion of the constant speed of light was completely unexpected.

Einstein asked the question: “Did God have a choice?” And the answer is: apparently not; unless one gives specific emphasis to the Anthropic Principle, particularly, the strong version. I don’t think the universe is teleological yet I would concede that ‘purpose’ has evolved, which means it is not predetermined, except to the extent that all chaotic phenomena are deterministic yet unpredictable.

The fact that we can’t mathematically derive the fine structure constant, amongst many others, does not diminish its significance. The fact that we have to uncover it empirically does not alter the fact that fundamental laws, expressed in mathematical relationships, appear intrinsic to the universe’s existence. So which comes first is very much a moot point.

The point I’d make is that mathematics can exist without the universe, but it’s unlikely that the universe could exist without mathematics.

I’d recommend Barrow’s book, The Constants of Nature, where he discusses this topic both technically and philosophically in some detail.

If someone held a belief that every individual should be treated as an individual and is therefore free to believe/think as they choose, wouldn't that kind of shortcircuit the internal processes that allow this sort of thing?

IE-if I were in Room 101-couldn't I vocalize that I agreed with them, to the point of being able to argue in their favor, while retaining that internal individualism which allows me to recognize the accuracy/falsehood of what they are trying to force upon me?

In your post you intimate that mathematics expresses "relationships" of universal laws.

This suggests that mathematics is simply the "language" that enables us to "communicate" with nature, i.e. to make sense of it...and to have a dialogue with it.

Mathematics can only be "real" and exist in the universe when it is "activated", i.e. doing mathematics.

This idea is completely different to the laws of nature. The laws of nature...are simply the laws of nature...and the most basic one is that objects in nature interact and communicate with each other.

For example, if one models the big bang assuming that the micro interacts with the macro AT a single point...one can use the Klein-Gordon equation to represent gravity at the quantum level and the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to represent gravity at the macro level; we then have a single micro object interacting with a single macro-object...

The interaction between the two "creates" the law...and at this moment of creation the mathematics is created as well...so two things happen when objects interact...a measurement is made and the law underlying the measurement is created (expressed for us in mathematics).

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